I believe that the following is an example of parallelism, am I correct?
"They made friends. They ran free."
Yes, you are correct. The example you provided is indeed an example of parallelism. Parallelism is a literary device where similar grammatical structures are used to create balance and rhythm in a sentence or a series of sentences.
In this case, both sentences have the same structure, starting with a subject pronoun ("They") followed by a verb ("made" and "ran") and an object ("friends" and "free"). This repetition of structure creates a parallelism, emphasizing the actions that the subject is performing and adding emphasis to the sentence. It also creates a more pleasing and balanced rhythm in the sentence.
To identify parallelism, it is important to look for similar sentence structures, word patterns, or recurring themes. In this example, the repetition of the subject-verb-object pattern creates a clear parallelism.